


Feathers

by RBennet



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e08 The Mountain and the Viper, F/M, Missing Scene, Prompt Fic, she knows what he wants, that sound you can hear is me pounding my writer's block into submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 05:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10483236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RBennet/pseuds/RBennet
Summary: Sansa practises a new skill.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WriterChick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterChick/gifts).



> All underlined dialogue is not mine.

A pile of feathers. What was she to do with them?

“I can get you something else m’lady?” the girl had said, her face contrite and panicked at her mistake. Nothing like the lazy maidens that would swan around her apartments in King’s Landing, mouths gossiping, thinking themselves better than servant's work. "Some beads, or...shells, maybe?"

“No,” Sansa had placated, feeling better with the sound, “l would like to use local things. These are perfect.”

The maid had brightened, like a flash of sunshine through the hanging grey clouds that cosseted the Eyrie.

And now the raven's feathers lay in a heap like soft, black tar. 

Harder to sew together than the wools and silks she is used to, but not impossible. Septa Mordane always said she took to a Lady’s skills well. Like weaving, crocheting, spinning. Lying.

Her fingers find the needle and lead her hands, her shoulders (still sore), her eyes (still red).

In the shaft of sunlight, she is warmer than she has been in days. The wind that whips through her hair up here is crueller than the air in the North. The walls are harder. Feelings, sharper.

One by slow one, she sews the feathers into place, hand steadier with every stitch.

She is absorbed fully, and does not notice the light move across the wall until he is there again. He is never far away anymore.

She doesn’t even startle when he opens her chamber door. His heels hit the stone, sharp clicks like knitting pins in the small room.

He stops.

She keeps her gaze cast down, knowing something now surer than anything she has ever known in her life; her eyes hold a power over him.

“First time I saw you, you were just a child. A girl from the north come to the capital for the first time. You’re not a child any longer.” His voice is rough. It is only smooth when he lies. “Why did you help me?”

She stays demure.  “They would have thrown you through the moon door if they found you guilty”

“That’s not an answer.”

“If they'd have executed you, what would they have done with me?” She is surprised the fear doesn’t come, how steady her voice holds. Instead, a bubble of excitement stirs low in her stomach, like the beginning of a game.  

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

“Better to gamble on the man you know than the strangers you don’t?” His tone has changed again, but she is playing her game and does not look up. “You think you know me?" 

He mocks her. His voice is low and dangerous, even without the howling wind and her Aunt's sobs, but the fluttering in her stomach urges her on.

She wants to _push_.

“I know what you want.”

“Do you?”

Her eyes leave her neat, careful stitches for the first time. And meet his.

The needle pulls the thread taught. He catches her triumph, like gold in his greedy hands.

She looks away, back to her delicate work, but her hands still.

The feathers, she notices, are more than just black. Colours catch the light, as she moves her fingertips over their surface – blues and greens and purples - that ripple and disappear again beneath the shadow.

For a time, he does not move, so she speaks, “What do we do now?”

He takes a step closer. “The Eyrie is no place to spend winter.”

“We are leaving?”

Another step. “Yes.”

“Is that safe?”

“Not for Sansa Stark.” Closer, closer, she hears the rustle of his silks. “But for Alayne Stone…”

He looms over her - a small man acting giant - so she raises her head, opens her eyes wide and parts her lips. His gaze follows.

There is a breath or two before he sits beside her, far too close. She can smell the mint he chews, the same as before in the snow. But here there is no one to see or spy or tell.

As before, his eyes are on her hair. “I will have a maid fetch you some dye, it is too…” he swallows, brings a ringed hand up as though he is helpless to its movements. Fingers the red strands that hang over her breast.

She glances up again, to use her power to move him this way or that. She cannot decide whether she wants to push him forward or back. A line appears between his brows but his eyes have softened.

“Petyr...” she tries, but fails.

And he touches his lips to hers, the bristle of his beard tickles. Her needle is lost, dropped into the feathers.

Her breath catches, like before, but this time she leans in, following the flutter in her belly. Closes her eyes.

The dress falls. She hears her sewing things hitting the floor.

Then it is as if all his anger is released and he surges, hands plunging into her hair, grasping her face while his body pushes her back onto the bed. Above her, he is warm and solid even though he is no larger than she; it makes her pulse bang hard in her throat. 

A gasp escapes her. His tongue forces past the delicate, desperate sound.

Her eyes are shut tight. He tastes overwhelmingly of mint. One of his hands slips from her hair to her waist, the other further down and pulls her hips so close to his that there cannot be any air between them.

Suddenly, the excitement of her game turns on her.

“Lord Baelish…” she says, muffled against his lips, trying to find some purchase against his chest.

He pauses. She opens her eyes and meets his, barely grey-green and nearly all black.

He wrenches back, two spots of pink high on his cheeks, hands held palm-open as though he has just grasped a boiling pot. His face is shadowed, but this time she knows that it is perhaps fear she sees there.

Of her.

Of her power to make him lose his careful control.

The sun has gone but she is too, too warm.

He picks up her sewing things from the floor, smoothing out the feathers, stroking them flat with his ringed fingers that not a moment before had been in her hair, around her waist, squeezing her thigh. Without meeting her eyes, he places it all in her lap like an offering.

He stands, pauses as if he will turn but doesn’t. Doesn’t look at her. “We leave at sunrise,” he says before he leaves, clicking on the stone.

Her heart is still pounding long after he goes.

She has something, and she does not know what it means yet.

But she knows now what to do with the pile of black feathers.

**Author's Note:**

> [This scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csxai6vEoyg), in case you want to watch it again (and again and again). 
> 
> Original prompt from [WriterChick](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterChick/works):  
> "Rewrite the scene from the show where Petyr enter's Sansa's chamber and asks why she lied for him. Offer them an opportunity to kiss there."
> 
> *practises


End file.
